The House of the Winds 




" Their Home is artiieu ■ivith azure 
and carpeted by green " 



The House of the 

Winds 



E:' J. Brady 

Author of 
* The Ways of Many Waters ' etc. 




Dodd, Mead and Company 

New York mcmxix 



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Printed in Great Britain 
hy T'urnhull&' Shears, Edtnbnrg;k 






Acknowledgment 



C ^V,^ The Author is indebted for first publica- 
r^ tion of some of the verses included herein 

^ to T/ie Bulletin and the Sydney Mail. 



Contents 



PAGE 



The Winds 9 

Sally Brown 13 

Trade 18 

Otahai 23 

Something at the Yard-arm 26 

Ice Virgins 29 

The Dead Ships 34 

Jack Marlin 38 

The Pilot 41 

Homing Chantey 48 

Retired 50 

Bread and Bunk and Beer 55 

The Ship Romance 59 

Southerly 62 

A Sea Phantasy 66 

The Pioneer 69 

*Let go For'ard' 74 

Boney 78 

The Parting 82 

7 



The House of the Winds 



PAGE 



The Stokehole 84 

A Tale of Twenty Men 88 

Meg o' Melbourne 95 

The Cutter Wongrabelle 103 

A Capstan Chantey 113 

The Fleets 115 

Johnny's Church 125 

A Ballad of the Captains 128 

Thine Ain Countree 132 

The Nor'-Easter 136 

A Thousand Years Between 143 

Hulks 150 



8 



The Winds 

So old they are, so young they are, whose 
tuneful voices stirred 
The tree-tops of Atlantis : whom skin- 
clad hunters heard, 
And dark Accadian lovers and 'plaining poets 

too, 
When Thought was in her cradle and human 
speech was new. 

They saw lolcos shining, the Argo by its 

shore ; 
They heard the Sirens calling in mythic days 

of yore ; 
They gave Columbus courage ; they sped 

Pizarro's keel, 
Before the leagues were lessened by cleaving 

bows of steel. 

Their House is arched with azure and carpeted 

by green, 
And curtained are its casements by sunlit 

damascene ; 

9 



The House of the Winds 

'Tis floored by Seven Oceans, whose level sur- 
face rolls 

From wainscot of wide places through door- 
ways of the Poles. 

Their never-silent Voices shall e'er authentic 

be ; 
The songs they sang to Homer they sing to 

you and me ; 
Across the red Sahara or through the waving 

corn ; 
At Sydney in the sunset, by Samos in the morn. 

They wailed o'er Alexander, and lone and 

tragic cried 
On stormy St Helena, the night Napoleon 

died ; 
So fey they are, so gay they are, whose constant 

songs are sung 
In tunes of ev'ry Music, in words of ev'ry 

tongue. 

We hear them in our cradles, and when the 

Shadows fall, 
Their Message of Departure these fateful 

Harpers call : 

lO 



The Winds 

A rose song in the morning, at noon a wild 

delight, 
But low among the cypress the Four Winds 

toll at Night. 

They played in purple Baalbec among the 

brown slave's curls, 
They whispered lovers' greetings to swart 

Assyrian girls; 
They walked before the Pharaohs ; they rode 

with Sheba's pride, 
And by the car of Csesar, and Tamerlane beside. 

They dwelled amid the splendour and panoply 

of Rome ; 
They bore the Normans over and led the 

Vikings home ; 
They lured the Norse to Greenland, they led 

the Moors to Spain ; 
They sped the Knights of Cortez a-down the 

Western Main. 

And don and devil dared them, and greasy 

traders prayed ;1 
And priests and pirates clamoured their mercies 

or their aid. 

II 



The House of the Winds 

They slew the strong Armada, and answered 

to the quest 
Of martyrs, rogues and rovers who journeyed 

South and West. 

Though now a Fleet of Iron their olden func- 
tion fills. 

No field shall fruit without them, without them 
no man tills ; 

With rain they gladden gardens, in sweetness 
keep the sea, 

Till Time's Long Epic endeth, and Men no 
more may be. 

So olden be, yet golden be, these Singers aye 

unseen. 
Who shout above the thunder, who whisper 

songs serene ; 
Who walk this planet's pathways, with fruitful- 

ness behind. 
Who sweep the House Terrestrial with besoms 

of the Wind. 



12 



Sally Brown 



HE R sails are furled and her anchors 
down, 
The lamps are lighted in Melbourne 
town ; 
ril spend my money on Sally Brown, 
Wey, hey I 
With a shipmate trtie and a pound or 
two, 
ril spend my money on Sally Brown^ 
Wey, hey, ho I 

We've brought her over from Puget Sound 

With her load o' Canadian pine ; 
And her blue-nose mate, that's dead and 
drowned, 

He was never a friend of mine. 

Been crimped in 'Frisco and jugged at 
'Pool ; 

I been stoushed in a Plymouth slum ; 
I've ' blued ' my money and played the fool 

With the Women, and Dice, and Rum. 

13 



The House of the Winds 

I've smelt the bilge of a Swedish brig 

Where the right whale breaches and blows ; 

I've sailed in a bark of Yankee rig 
To the land where the cotton grows. 

I've lived in the Land o' the God-Forbid 

Where hell is your daily lot ; 
I sarved my time as a fo'castle kid 

In the House of the God-forgot. 

I've shipped with tigers and human swine ; 

I've shipped with a yaller crew ; 
An' Satan himself was mild and fine 

To some of the mates I knew. 

He led 'em all by a level mile ; 

He could make it an easy win 
On any track of the All-That's-Vile 

On the sawdust courses o' sin. 

** The seas are mine," said the Lord above 
When the work o' the world began ; 

He gave them Hate and He gave them Love, 
Hard graft, and the Sailorman. 

14 



Sally Brown 

He made them wide, and He made them deep, 

With a seaport here and there, 
And plenty o' rain and salt to keep 

The depths and the shallows clear. 

And North and South they are green and grey. 
But the Middle Seas they are blue, — 

We slid him out at the fall of day 

When the skipper had read it through. 

A blue- nosed mate with a ginger 'ead 

And a squint in his ugly eye, — 
The Bluebeards crew, to a man, they said 

It was good that the mate should die. 

Aye ! Dago Pete with his broken face ; 

And ' Sails,' what he kicked and cowed — 
I guess old * Sails ' took heart o' grace 

When he stitched him into his shroud — 

And Boozer Bill, from the State o' Maine ; 

Old Pat and Antonio ; 
That partin' brought 'em no grief or pain ; 

They all had their marks to show. 

15 



The House of the Winds 

He hazed us out o' the bloomin' Bay 
Till we lifted the Southern light : 

He hazed the watch through the livelong day 
And he made a hell of the Night. 

It was 'dargs' and 'skulkers' and 'hogs' 
and ' skunks ' ; 
And sorrow and sweating and curse ; 
Till we dreamt at night in our crowded bunks 
Of his sudden death — and worse. 

• • • • • 

His soul was posted as overdue 

At the homing Port o' Hell. 
A block in a way that blocks will do 

From 'er crosstrees somehow . . . fell ! 

He sprawled the deck like a stricken bull 

To the lilt of a ten-knot breeze ; 
With the canvas drawing free and full 

As she parted the combing seas. 

Her planks were splashed and spattered and 
red, 

Till we scraped 'em with holystone. 
It ketched him fair on his ginger 'ead 

And he went with 'ardly a moan ! 
i6 



Sally Brown 

He lived a dog, an' a dog he died ; 

I watched him a-sinking down, 
As we put him over the Bluebird's side 

On the road to Melbourne town. 

• • • • • 

Now Dago Pete he will find a girl, 

Antonio * blue in ' his gain ; 
And Pat get drunk as an Irish earl, 

With Bill from the State o' Maine. 

We've brought her over from Puget Sound 
With her load o' Canadian pine ; 

That blue-nose mate that is dead an' drowned 
He was never a friend o' mine. 

The Bluebird s anchor is out and down ; 
The girls are waiting in Melbourne town ; 
r II spend my money on Sally Brown^ 

Wey, hey I 
With a messmate true and a pound to * blue' 
ril spend my money on Sallee Brown^ 

Wey, hey, ho I 



B 



17 



Trade 

Two thousand years of the Christian 
creed, and a thousand years before, 
Spewing their cargoes out on the quays, 
re-gorging their holds once more, 
Over the rolHng Seas of the World, wherever 

its ports are laid. 
They come and go with a royal show, the 
Ships of the Merchant Trade. 

The timid tubs of an early day, they hurriedly 

plied their oars ; 
For dragons dwelled in the waters then, and 

demons by the shores ; 
And Circe lilting a magic strain in her isle 

enchanted knew 
How a little soft song will ne'er go wrong with 

a sour, sea-wearied crew. 

The Cyclops haunted their working hours, with 

the Gorgons grim and dread ; 
And every ninth wave threatened death ; and 

the storm fiends overhead 
i8 



Trade 

Their dreams beset with sea-born beasts ; nor 

ever a man might know 
If a wanton sprite some evil spite was devilling 

down below. 

But — daring the chance of dangers dire, in the 

years beyond the years, 
The Giants who dwelled in the Dark of Things, 

the myths and the olden fears ; 
They laboured their ladings out and home that 

the profits might be made — 
For, old or new, this story is true, that trade 

for ever is — trade. 

Ay, the bills of lading, notched on staves by 

the skin-clad hirelings, told 
The consignees how their cargoes lay in the 

skin kayaks of old ; 
As the bricks they baked in Babylon, or 

scribed on papyrus. 
Or the printed bills the type girl fills, are telling 

to-day to us. 

The portly merchant of Sidon town most 

certainly had no thought 
That a future day would classic deem the goods 

that he sold and bought. 

19 



The House of the Winds 

He Invoiced Carthage, at market rates, collected 

his cash when due, 
Complained of the shameful waste of stores, 

and probably starved the crew. 

And if it chanced that a Tuscan thief, in his 

prowling galley free, 
Consigned the goods to his private horde, the 

company to the sea, 
That portly owner of Sidon town anathematized 

the Fates, 
And sent a load by another road, and charged 

'em at double rates. 

While Plato dreamed of his perfect State, and 

Caesar of his Crown, 
The trading ships of the ancient time were 

travelling up and down 
With the corn and oil and clothes and drink, 

and the simple mundane things 
Of work and play In the every-day — which 

rarely a poet sings. 

The high-decked hulls of the Kentish ports In 

a later fashion went 
With their English wool to feed, In course, the 

looms of the Continent ; 
20 



Trade 

Then haled them home with the Flemish cloth 

and the wines of Gascony, 
That the Saxon maids and their Norman blades 

might clothed and couraged be. 

But wider the world began to grow, and always 

the distance less — 
Though the world to-day is a narrow place to 

the world of good Queen Bess. 
For all its rovers are sleeping sound, nor over 

the Spanish Main 
Shall the Golden Hinds^i sail to find adventure 

and spoil again. 

For the English King wears an Alpine hat — 
they haven't a king in France — 

And the shipping rings have sounded far the 
death of the old Romance ; 

Now the Kentish ships are manned by Hans 
and Pedro and Yonson blonde ; 

And the wond'rous sea Columbus dared is only 

• The Herring Pond.' 

And over the Transatlantic wire (soon to be 

* out of use ' ) 

The wireless flashes the liner swift her budget 
of daily news. 

21 



The House of the Winds 

Anon, 'twill patter the price of stocks to the 

flying Ships of Air 
To keep in touch with the Wall-street bears, 

the travelling millionaire. 

So over the years and down the years, till the 

suns and stars grow cold. 
Till all the waters of all the world are backward 

in chaos rolled, 
Till Gabriel's trump shall call them up who 

under the seas are laid, 
To the east and west the worst and best shall 

follow the tracks of trade. 

A hundred Caesars may come and go, or a 

thousand Shakespeares shine ; 
A hundred Brownings singing of Art, a hundred 

Omars of Wine ; 
The Ledger stands where the Ledger stood, 

nor ever its voice gainsaid 
On earth shall be by the land or sea, while 

trade for ever is — trade. 



22 



Otahai 

ON the beach at Otahai 
You remember, you and I, 
And the rollers on the bars, 
And the moonlight and the stars — 
On that beach at Otahai 
You'll remember — you and I. 

What's the use a sailor loving, 
Round the world for ever roving ? 
What's the use to think or care. 
Keep or lose or hold or share ? 
What's the use to laugh or sing, 
What's the good of anything ? 

But the wind was in your hair, 
And your face was sunset fair. 
And I saw the starlit skies 
Mirrored in your dreaming eyes, 
As the night went laughing by 
On that beach at Otahai. 

Then the leaves like lace hung down 
From the sleeping palm tree's crown ; 

23 



The House of the Winds 

Then we heard the sea birds call, 
Heard the night tide rise and fall — 
Loving, dreaming, you and I, 
On the beach at Otahai. 

Ah ! that warm, white night perfumed 
When the rollers broke and boomed, 
When our hearts were beating so. 
Ah ! that night of long ago ! 
Ah ! that night — and you and I 
On the beach at Otahai ! 

Still the palm trees dance and sway 
In the moonlight far away ; 
Still the sea birds dip and call, 
Still the long tides rise and fall. 
Still the laughing night goes by 
On the beach at Otahai. 

Life is ashes ! Even so, 
For that night of long ago 
All the days I have to live. 
Ah, so freely would I give — 
For that night and you and I 
On the beach at Otahai. 
24 



Otahai 

What's the use a sailor loving, 
Round the world for ever roving ? 
What's the good to laugh or sing ? 
What's the good to-day, to-morrow, 
Life or Death, or Joy or Sorrow — 
What's the good of anything ? 



25 



Something at the Yard-arm 

THERE'S something at the yard- 
arm 
That's swinging to and fro ; 
There's something at the yard-arm — 

The drums are beating slow. 
They swung it to the yard-arm 

AHve a while ago ; 
They hung it to the yard-arm 
For all the fleet to know. 

What is it rocks so gently, 

Tarpaulin, can you see ? 
What is it swings so slowly 

Above the sunlit sea ? 
A messmate's hanging yonder 

Upon the gallows-tree. 
Oh, high it's hanging yonder — 

The corpse of Mutiny. 

There's something at the yard-arm 

That dips to every roll, 
With muffled drums a-beating 

Instead of bells to toll. 
26 



Something at the Yard-arm 

There's something at the yard-arm 
That answers every roll ; 

The Admiral is watching, 
Black anger in his soul. 

The Provost Marshal's wiping 

The sweat from off his face ; 
The man beside the yard-rope 

He staggers in his place ; 
The Captain's walking hurried 

And stepping out of pace ; 
The Chaplain by the cat-head 

Is moving God for grace. 

What is it in the hammock, 

Tarpaulin, can you see ? 
What is it in the hammock 

That lifts so heavily ? 
A dead man's in his hammock, 

And evermore to be 
Between the round shot lying 

Asleep beneath the sea. 

There's something at the yard-arm 
That's hanging high and white ; 

The middle watch that saw it 
Is cursing in affright ! 



27 



The House of the Winds 

There's something at the yard-arm 
A-swinging all the night ; 

There's something at the yard-arm- 
God send the morning light ! 



N 



28 



Ice Virgins 



PALE virgins of the Arctic, 
They pulse across the tides 
To meet the lords Antarctic 
Who fain would make them brides. 

The wicked White Fox spied them 

Beyond the Frozen Sea, 
With but dim Night to hide them, 

Still sleeping nakedly. 

A woman-seal, bewailing 

Her dead cub in the floe. 
Saw one tall wanton sailing 

Out South'ard through the snow. 

Down by the Crozets lying — 



Storm-stricken on the waste — 
In weedy seas slow dying 
Her twin berg bids her haste. 

A man-seal strangely bleeding 

Beneath the midnight sun 
Beheld him proudly speeding 

Toward far Septentrion. 

29 



The House of the Winds 

Long, long he fared and sought her 
From realms of Night and Fire, 

The grey North's gracious daughter- 
His lily of desire. 

The clumsy cow-whale, giving 

A great dug to her calf, 
Breaks surges unforgiving 

That built his cenotaph. 

The petrel heard him groaning, 
The penguin saw him die. 

The dovekies mock her moaning, 
The daft auks watch her by. 

Now, in their bride-robes biding 
Throng down her sisters tall, 

Whose lords-elect are chiding. 
Whose waiting bridegrooms call. 

In vain their mad dams stayed them- 
The painted glaciers these, 

Who on their cold breasts laid them 
Through aching centuries. 



30 



Ice Virgins 

Once came the Vikings sweeping — 
Red fell the clean snows then — 

Once came the long ships leaping 
Of swart Basque sailor-men ; 

Once came John Cabot, sailing 

Nor'- West for rich Cathay ; 
Once Baffin's tub turned trailinof 

A-leak to Melville Bay. 

Came Ghosts — of Hudson steering 

To skirt the — Middle Ice ; 
Came Shades — of Franklin, Behring, 

First Sons of Sacrifice. 

What heed these white maids, burning, 
Who sweep by Cape Farewell ? 

What heeds the Earth-maid, yearning, 
Doomstruck ? — Love legends tell. 

The ice-blink fadeth faster 

From strange green water-skies ; 

Each berg her lot has cast her 
Where now her love-lot lies. 

31 



The House of the Winds 

Fierce Southern Seas enfold them, 
Torn from their glacial shore, 

And strong-armed breakers hold them 
A-dreaming evermore. 

Yon' wings the fond she-eider, 
Yon' creeps the lone white hare. 

And with her cubs beside her 
Slow hunts the Polar bear. 

Bejewelled charms revealing, 

Pink harlots they at noon, 
But sinless ladies stealing 

Soft homeward in the moon. 

So comes the King-berg Nor' ward 

To seek his love again ; 
So goes the Queen-berg forward. 

Amort and all in vain. 

She at the Grand Bank dieth, 
Who thus the Sun-god dares ; 

He, worn and wasted, lieth 
A-dying at the Snares. 



32 



Ice Virgins 

He may not kiss his rover, 
The warm blue seas between ; 

She may not clasp her lover, 
Nor be his Boreal Queen. 

They greet not, meet not ever ; 

They touch not mouth to mouth, 
Who still go North for ever, 

For ever who go South. 



33 



The Dead Ships 

SOUND, sleeping sound, with their sere 
sails rotting round, 
On their bleached beds down below, 
By a viscid seaweed slimed, by a hoar ooze 
whitely rimed. 
Lie low, the drown'd dead ships lie low. 
All dreaming of the dockyards. 
All longing for the quays ; 
Where the living ships yet come and 

go, 
Still waiting for the south wind. 
Still watching for the tides. 
And the cheery sailor lad's ye-ho. 



Deep, crowded deep, where the clammy sea- 
slugs creep, 
And the polyp builds and bores. 
Turn the traders in their grief, groan the gun- 
ships on the reef. 
Roll the frigates on the floors. 

Oh, the gunship hears the stroke 
Of the round-shot through the oak, 
34 



The Dead Ships 

And the shouting and the cheering of the 
boarders dashing down. 
But the tradeship's gentle soul 
Loves the tender lap and roll 
Of the white-caps making music on the road 
to London town. 

Low, sleeping low, as the live ships come and 

go, in their tarnished, torn attire. 
They who swung from London town, they 

who took the purple down 
Into Carthage out of Tyre. 
Oh, the gilded barge of Caesar! Oh, the 

cohorts golden-mailed ! 
But, oh, the green lolcos on the morn that 

Jason sailed ! 
Dreams, dreaming dreams, lie the Suffete's 

proud triremes 
In their silted Punic bays, 
And a tramp hulk rests beside with the glory 

and the pride 
Of the Doges and the Deys. 

How fares it with the Builders who wrought 
so lovingly ? 

35 



The House of the Winds 

What alleth, then, the Builders, that they thus 

quiet be ? 
Nay, ask the brown mounds yonder, I pray ye 

ask not me. 
Far, rocking far, grinds the galleon on the 
bar 
When the night winds moan and cry ; 

'Tween her curved ribs — shotted yet — 
Culverin and falconet. 
With the linstocks rusting by. 

Ho, Master Thomas Fleming, 
Why swings your mains'! round ? 

The great Armada's coming 
Up Channel, inward bound, 

And I've brave news to carry 
This morn to Plymouth Sound. 

Sore, smitten sore, by a jagged saw-toothed 
shore, 
By the broadswords of the waves. 

With their spewed freights rotting 

slow 
While the live ships come and go, 
Dream the dead ships in their graves. 

36 



The Dead Ships 

Out of darkness, out of light, slain at noon- 
time, killed at night. 
By wrack, by fire, by wound untold — 
In his eyes her blind eyes stare, 
On her fleshless fingers there — 
See ! love-locked yet — the hoop of gold ! 

Grey, waiting grey, for the Trump of Judg- 
ment Day, 
Where the gorged seas groaning spread. 
Lie the Lost Fleets biding deep, 
Lie the Squadrons all asleep. 
Lie the Squadrons of the Dead 1 



n 



Jack Marlin 



Now at the window, side by side, 
We sit and take our ease. 
And watch the ebb and flow of tide 
That sweetens all the seas. 

His face is in the twilight glow, 

His teeth a pipe between — 
A sailor of the years ago, 

An old man grey and lean. 

He knew the Western waterways 

Before the whirling screw ; 
The clippers of the sailing days, 

In all their pride, he knew. 

Jack Marlin's voice is harsh and shrill, 

But as he hoarsely sings, 
I see the grand old vessels fill 

Their white, outspreading wings. 

I hear his long-dead messmates round 

A rusty capstan go ; 
I hear the songs of * Homeward Bound,' 

The song of * Lowland's Low.' 

38 



Jack Marlin 

I hear the cotton chanteys ring, 

And, out across the bars, 
I see the Black-ball flyers fling 

Their topmasts to the stars. 

The Indi'man she tacks and wears 
O'er heaving miles of foam ; 

The Bristol trader humbly bears 
Her owner's cargoes home. 

The riding lamps glint through the rain 
Where in their roadsteads lie 

The timid hulls of Trade again — 
As in the nights gone by. 

Aye, in the nights their rain-wet spars 
Loom high and strange, I ween. 

When out beyond the crooning bars, 
The seabirds call unseen. 



The light has faded from the west 

And o'er a shadowed sea, 
With black wings folded on her breast, 

Night broods — and mystery. 

39 



The House of the Winds 

Jack Marlin, with the rising moon 
Is singing, hoarse and low, 

Strange words to some forgotten tune 
Of fifty years ago ! 



40 



A 



The Pilot 

LERT and ever ready — all ship-shape, 
trim and bright, 
A stout boat on the davits hung well 
out by day and night — 
The Pilot, at her moorings, swings restless 

with the tide, 
As if she knew and envied the company out- 
side. 

All times the look-out hearkens — his functions 

to fulfil- 
To voice of lamp and bunting high up on 

Signal Hill, 
A red light, at her masthead, burns through 

the night alway, 
When all good folk are dreaming in all the 

world away. 

Oft, drowsily digesting the thoughts of need 

and deed, 
When midnight turns toward morning, I hear 

a shrill, * Proceed ! ' 

41 



The House of the Winds 

In half-awakened fancy — while good folk keep 

their beds — 
I glimpse some inward Argo awaiting off the 

Heads. 

Perchance a lumber schooner, from Puget with 

her load, 
That aids the builder finish a city man's abode. 
Across the vast Pacific from ' Bear ' to * Cross ' 

she's swung 
To shout of loud sea orders and rolling chanteys 

sung. 

Across the wondrous ocean that proud Pizarro 

hailed, 
A hard-faced Yankee skipper successfully hath 

sailed. 
His bo'sun from New Bedford ; his mate, who, 

doubtless, too 
Could curse in seven lingoes and 'haze' a 

sullen crew. 

To-night they'll hit the city with money in the 

purse. 
And seek their recreation for better or for 

worse ; 
42 



The Pilot 

They'll walk with fickle Phryne ; with Bacchus 

sally forth 
To booze in classic Pyrmont and brawl in 

George-street North. 

We trust this briny ballad, uncultured, will not 

shock 
The beaux who air their graces to belles of 

four o'clock. 
Our Jacks are not the fashion, no social circles 

know 
The slaves of seven oceans who drink a while 

and go. 

They get no band to cheer them, no toast 
artistic brown. 

No waiting maids in muslin to bring the tea- 
trays down ; 

They meet no gay acquaintance with jovial 
quip and grin 

Who run the * rolling forties ' and fetch the 
cargoes in. 

Perchance a stately linerthe Pilot proudly waits — 
A tall, important stranger, who calls without 
the Gates. 

43 



The House of the Winds 

Ah, here the picture changes ! Now madame 

need not fear — 
A liner's manner's perfect ; her morals are not 

queer. 

A diva and a doctor, a maestro from Milan, 
A baronet (in knickers), a bishop, saintly 

man, 
Whose thirst is quenched with Moet ; how 

shocked he'd surely be 
To hear they had no stewards upon Lake 

Galilee ! 

Gilt mouldings in the state rooms, in evening 

dress to dine, 
A pianola playing, and ladies, love and wine — 
So comes the floating palace, and, if I dream 

aright. 
Her steerage and her stokehold are somewhere 

out of sight. 

When Gabo in the winter is warding off the 

blows 
Of giant winds that, cradled in dark Antarctic 

snows, 

44 



The Pilot 

Come tearing up from Tasman, the Pilot in his 

place 
Awaits the call of duty, unruffled, blithe of face. 

'Tis choppy down the harbour ; there's surf on 

Middle Head ; 
The coasters run for shelter, the sky is roofed 

with lead ; 
The rollers break in thunder, and flying spume 

and spray 
Go drifting o'er the headlands of wind-swept 

Watson's Bay. 

Naught heed these sturdy sea-dogs — ex- 
skippers, bluff and strong, 

Who make the Pilot Service that helps the 
world along, 

The bells below are clanging ; a waiting ship's 
in need — 

Run up your bit o' bunting ! And let the boat 
proceed ! 

She drops her harbour moorings, the smoke 

pours out a-lee, 
She dances to the music and dares the combing 

sea ; 

45 



The House of the Winds 

And If her boats won't live it, he'll signal o'er 

the foam 
To bid the stranger ' Follow ' — and lead him 

safely home. 

So dapper and so steady, so neat, alert and gay — 
'Tis good to see the Pilot on watch by night 

and day. 
And glad are they to greet him, the skippers 

and their crews. 
To help him o'er the taffrail and get his latest 

news. 

The first to say ' Good-morrow,' the last to 

bid ' Good-bye,' 
Whatever port they hail from, whatever flag 

they fly ; 
He sets them on the high road, their homeward 

coasts to win ; 
He meets them in the offing and brings them 

surely in. 

All pilots go to Heaven, as ev'ry seaman 

knows ; 
No matter what his failings, nor yet how bad 

his clothes. 

46 



The Pilot 

No pilot ever reaches the Port of Pitch and 

Flame, 
For Charon takes him over ; and Charon 

knows the game ! 



47 



Homing Chantey 

OH, swinging down the Western Main, 
And roaring round the Horn, 
We'll bring her to the docks again 
With California's corn — 
Home in the summer-time, 
Home in the summer-time, 
Our good ship has to be ; 
Old ' Stormy's ' dead and in his bed. 
And all the winds are free. 

Her bowsprit, like an albatross, 

Goes wheeling to the sky : 
We'll raise the Bear and sink the Cross 
Before the doldrums die — 
Home in the summer-time, 
Home in the summer-time. 
Back from the Golden Gate, 
With cash to * blue ' on Sis and Sue, 
A wedding ring for Kate. 

You'll get your pay, and I'll get mine — 

The tree must bear its fruits, 
And four lean months upon the brine, 

<< Pay — Paddy Doyle for his boots" — 

48 



Homing Chantey 

Home in the summer-time, 
Home in the summer-time, 
From San Francisco quays ; 
Fo'castle Jack has laboured back 
Over the hung'ring seas. 

Oh, sing my lads ! The tall Azores 

Sink in the sunset down — 
Oh, sing my lads, the white chalk shores 
That lead to London town ! 
Home in the summer-time, 
Home in the summer-time. 
Our good ship has to be ; 
For Sis and Sue they wait for you, 
And my Kate waits for me ! 



D 49 



Retired 

HE owns a little villa 
Beside the Sydney shore, 
This grizzled, grey old skipper, 
Retired, and sixty-four. 

I often see him sitting 

On his verandah chair, 
The sea-wind gently blowing 

About his foam-white hair. 

Before him spreads the Harbour, 

And, telescope to eye, 
He watches, late and early, 

The ship-procession by. 

And spar and mast and funnel, 
And engine, sail and screw, 

They speak to him the language 
Of that great world he knew. 

They tell him of the countries 

That lie so far away ; 
The messmates and the cronies 

Of his departed day. 

50 



Retired 

His wife is sleeping yonder, 

He laid her down at sea ; 
A long-gone captain's daughter, 

A captain's darling she. 

And oft, I know, his glasses 

Grow filmy with the dim, 
Sad memories and longings 

The brave ships bring to him. 

He knows them all by number, 
And most he knows by name ; 

The whither of their going, 

The whence their cargoes came. 

And oft I see him passing 

His hand across his eyes, 
When hoot the outward sirens 

And high Blue Peter flies. 

The ports that they are bound for— 
Ah, these he knows right well, 

The light and buoy and beacon, 
The foghorn and the bell. 

51 



The House of the Winds 

He sees, In mind, the coastline, 
He sees the storm-swept bay, 

And down the foggy channel 
He feels a cautious way. 

He sees the docks of London, 
Where once his lading he 

To cheer his merchant owners 
Delivered faithfully. 

In dreams he sees the Indies, 
In dreams he doth behold 

The coasts of California, 

The fevered Coasts of Gold. 

The Cape and Horn, in fancy, 
He beats around again, 

In sunshine and in starshine, 
In clear and calm and rain. 

The clipper roads, he knew them, 
The infant days of Steam — 

And ships, long dead, forgotten. 
Go drifting through his dream. 



52 



Retired 

Along that wide verandah 

He paces to and fro ; 
And with him walk the shipmates 

Of years and years ago. 

He hears the homing chanteys, 
And on the poop he stands, 

With ready crew beneath him 
To follow his commands. 

He dresses and he strips her, 
He lays her course once more 

From Boston to the Foreland, 
From 'Frisco to the Nore. 

I doubt not he is ready 

His final Port to win ; 
I doubt not that St Peter 

Will let the old man in. 

His papers all in order ; 

His manifest clear writ. 
With many goodly items 

Set down, in gold, on it. 



53 



The House of the Winds 

One day he'll take his passage 
To that Uncharted Shore 

Whence neither crew nor captain 
Re-voyage evermore. 



54 



Bread and Bunk and Beer 

THE Captains got the credit, 
The claret and the crowns ; 
Their ladies laid in laces, 
And walked in 'broidered gowns. 
Throughout ' Our Splendid Story ' 

Their fame is blazoned clear. 
But barren bays of glory 
Were theirs whose labours gory 
Bought Bread and Bunk and Beer. 

They sickened in foul cockpits. 

They sweated at the sheets, 
The gleanings of the village, 

The harvest of the streets — 
A press-gang's squalid mintage 

(' Our Splendid Story ' runs). 
But heroes in the vintage, 
Who poured, with no mean stintage. 

Their blood before the guns. 

Sour gallows-fruit plucked seaward — 
That might have riped anon — 

They laid their hulks like Vikings 
Beside the galleon ; 

55 



56 



The House of the Winds 

With ruffian courage cheering 

When crashing broadsides woke ; 
Their ribald jowls appearing 
At splintered port-holes ; jeering 
At Death across the smoke. 

The quarter-deckers, o'er them, 

Should bloody efforts fruit, 
Would take the cream of glory, 

The lion's share of loot 
And limelight in dispatches — 

But, showing mickle fear 
Of mortal wounds or scratches, 
Below they plied the matches 

For Beef and Bunk and Beer. 

They manned the merchant service, 

As yet to-day they do. 
Crimped, duped or belly-driven 

To make a deep-sea crew ; 
With Three-toed Pete, the Dago, 

Red Hans and Nigger Joe, 
Black Juan of Santiago 
And all the scum that may go 

The roads the deep tanks know. 



Bread and Bunk and Beer 

In dripping, damp sou' westers, 

In greasy dungarees, 
They fetch a nation's commerce 

Across the hungry seas ; 
Yea — sinners sair but canty — 

Pig-iron, pork and pearls, 
They freight with shout and chanty 
For silver small and scanty 

To spend among the girls. 



Their epitaphs are written — 

Among the ooze and slime — 
A nameless, fameless Legion 

Evanished into Time. 
Unplaced among the planners 

Of Empire high and strong. 
Despite their godless manners 
They bore her blood-red banners 

The utmost Seas along. 

They drudged, they fought, they famished- 
Raw wounds and death for gain — 

That ships might outward journey, 
And eke come home again ; 



57 



The House of the Winds 

A feckless host, hard-faring, 

God ease their souls of sin. 
And grant them for their daring, 
Full meed of rest un-wearing, 
The hollow seas within ! 

A requiem yet the surges 

For these hard lives shall sing, 
When o'er the Seven Oceans 

A thousand airships wing ; 
And down far Time-Tracks hoary 

The Seas will thunder clear, 
The worth in human story 
Of these, whose gain and glory 

Was Bed and Beef and Beer. 



58 



The Ship Romance 

OUTSIDE 'tis gold and azure ; 
Within 'tis grey and green — 
The brave high headlands rearing 
Their fortressed bulk between. 

The gates stand ever opened, 

And lo ! the ships go down, 
Like black swans veering seaward 

To 'scape the crowded town. 

Like white swans faring homeward 

The inward ships come o'er, 
To fold their tired wings softly 

A season by the shore. 

Thy blue-eyed baby crooning 

Its wonder and delight, 
Shall ask thee whither go they, 

The black swans and the white. 

*' The white swan-ships, beloved, 
That through the morn have gone. 

Sail out " — so wilt thou whisper — 
** To far-off Avalon. 



59 



The House of the Winds 

** Their good knights' shining falchions, 

With hilts of fairy gold, 
In yonder sunburst gleaming 

Thou mayest yet behold. 

''With red hearts fiercely burning 
Beneath their breasts of steel, 

That wicked, wanton merman 
Who slew the pure white seal, 

** Those black sea-knights thou sawest 

Ride nobly down the bay 
To-night have gone a-seeking 

In lone seas far away. 

** Their ways, O heart's delight, are 

Most wondrous to pursue, 
And val'rous, brave and splendid 

With deeds of derring-do. 

** And they shall see the Rainbow 
That rings the Midnight Sun, 

And hear the Phoenix singing 
Before their task is done." 



60 



The Ship Romance 

What though that fabled Island 
Lies deep beneath the Sea ? 

What though that wicked Merman 
A stout Ship-owner be ? 

In dreams the Fleets of Childhood 
Sail back a thousand years 

To coasts of strange old fancies 
And strangely sweet old fears ; 

And, bound for fair Atlantis 
From out the port of Chance — 

For Poet, Child and Woman 
Still sails the ship Romance, 



6i 



Southerly 



OH, North and East from Conran, 
The heel of old Cape Howe 
Upon his worn foundations 
Is planted firmly now. 

For loud Antarctic weather 
Beats on his seaward gates ; 

And Wind and Sea together 
Race home from Bass's Straits. 

Scared ketches out of Mario, 
Drenched by a stinging spray, 

Run hard to make their shelter, 
Ere night, at Twofold Bay. 

The freighted coasters stagger 

Half-buried in the boil ; 
They slow their groaning engines 

And lamely south'ard toil. 

The liner makes her offing. 

And, proud in strong disdain, 
Defies the fighting furies 

That pound her sides in vain. 
62 



Southerly 

Close-reefed, a Glasgow clipper, 

Along a path of foam, 
With all the gale behind her, 

Is racing gaily home. 

* Stand off! ' the signals order, 
' Stand off! ' and beat away ; 

The bars, with white teeth snarling, 
Are growling Death to-day I 

On high Shoalhaven forelands, 
And down by Wollongong, 

The green seas shout and thunder 
Their wildest Wagner song. 

From Schank to Port Macquarie 
The mad white horses speed ; 

The coasts are wet with spindrift 
From Wilson's to the Tweed. 

The seabird, shoreward driven. 
To all the world protests ; 

The swans complaining cover 
Their fledglings in the nests. 



63 



The House of the Winds 

Across the Southern Ocean, 

Along the Tasman Sea, 
Each hghthouse-keeper holdeth 

His charges warily. 

Hard mates their decks are pacing. 
And anxious skippers dart 

Quick glances from the shoreline 
Unto the open chart. 

One eye upon his compass, 
Firm poised on inward heel. 

The steersman's hands of iron 
Are clamped about the wheel. 

Gaunt bergs and groaning glaciers, 
Floe ice and fogs and snows 

By red volcanoes lighted. 

This howling South Wind knows 

From that lone land untrodden 
That rings the mystic Pole, 

He comes with strange, wild anger 
Within his boreal soul. 



64 



Southerly 

He leaves, to mark his going, 
Brown weed and kelp uptorn, 

And driftwood on the beaches 
That front a clearer morn. 

And wreckage, slowly rising 
And falling in the swell, 

To-morrow, at the dawning, 
Its own drear tale will tell. 

The bruised ships, death-delivered, 
Replace their riven spars, 

And clean tides freshly enter 
Across re-opened bars. 

Once more a cloudless, splendid 
Blue arch beams overhead. 

And all the seas are grateful 
The wild South Wind is dead. 



E 65 



A Sea Phantasy 

FOUR-FIFTHS of the World are water 
yet ; four-fifths of a Man the same ; 
The First Life Cell from the Primal 
Sea, to mother all kingdoms came. 
If I but saw with the mollusc's eyes, and 

thought with a human brain, 
I'd read, mayhap, the Riddle of Why, and 
utter its meaning plain. 

This is the wisdom of all the Books ; the learn- 
ing of all the Schools ; 

A fifth of the globe is habitat for millions of, 
mostly — fools : 

Only a fifth for the foot of Man ; but out where 
the right whale goes. 

Four times as wide, lies an under-world that 
nobody sees — or knows ! 

Under the lighted glass of the Sea, below in 

the worlds unseen, 
Lieth an Asia yet unmapped and a Europe 

submarine. 
66 



A Sea Phantasy 

A second's swing of the Planet's pole, the pull 

of an asteroid, 
And a new Atlantis might arise — an Asia sink 

in the void. 

Far is the boundary fence of Time. Shall ever 

the world be sure 
The chance and change of a million years will 

cease for a hundred more ? 
If we had seen as the Dinosaur and spake with 

a human tongue. 
What tales of the aeons past and gone would 

surely be scribed and sung ! 

The polyps building their continents, in the 

Scheme and Plan of Things, 
A greater value in sooth may have than ever a 

bard who sings ; 
And who shall say but the alga dark that under 

the salt wave grows 
Holds equal grace in the Maker's eyes with the 

fairest garden rose ? 

Old is the story of Ocean ; old, in the further 
Eocene, 

67 



The House of the Winds 

When fiery mountain and quaking hills bom- 
barded its margins green ; 

The waters then are the waters now, with little 
of loss or gain ; 

But age by age have the lands been changed and 
risen and sunk again. 

Four-fifths of a world for level plain, and a fifth 

of wrinkled crust, 
To tell its story in broken lines of effort, failure 

and dust ; 
A fifth to carry the Race of Men, but four for 

the sweep of Tides, 
And so the Ship of the World through Space, 

with the Cosmic Squadron rides ! 



68 



The Pioneer 

HE stands beside the wind-swept 
verge, 
The Flint Age just begun, 
He sees the grey, incoming surge 

Grow red beneath the sun ; 
The primal seas before him hold 

What danger and what fear, 
This builder of the aeons old. 
This Shipwright Pioneer? 

His knotted hands, with stone and fire 

In cloud and shine have wrought 
Through days of failure and desire 

The rude inventor's thought — 
A tattooed chief, long ages sunk 

In far, forgotten night. 
Who chose the bole and felled the trunk 

And paced its length aright. 

His auroch's tooth and mammoth tusk, 

And greenstone axe have done 
Slow service in the falling dusk 

And with the lifted sun ; 

69 



The House of the Winds 

The sweat of toll, uncouth, sublime, 
Has drenched his bare limbs o'er — 

This workman in the dawn of Time, 
This Titan by the shore. 

A Fulton in a wolf-skin dress, 

Whose fame no legends tell. 
Through travail vast and hourly stress 

He held his purpose well. 
Bull-chested, savage, heavy-limbed, 

Barbaric, past, remote. 
His fame in fitting voice is hymned 

From ev'ry storm wind's throat. 

The twin screw sings his work divine 

Across a peopled sea ; 
From Greenland to the circling line 

Who worthier than he ? 
The turbine's shaft shall call his deed 

Above the charted floors. 
And, city-sown, they'll grant him meed 

Of praise, the thousand shores. 

Homeric in the Dawn he stands ; 

Wild triumph lights his face ; 
The Key of Distance in his hands — 

An Overlord of Space, 



70 



The Pioneer 

Eyes shaded by a palm of might, 

Peering the level plain — 
Out from the World's Primeval Night 

He glares, and sinks again ! 

Builder was he ere Asia knew 

Aught of Accadian tents : 
Builder was he ere Egypt grew 

Skilled in the rudiments. 
Master of Craft ere Rome and Tyre 

Sprang from their swamp and fen, 
Pointing with flint and bone and fire 

The way for sailor-men. 

A gaunt Columbus in the weird. 

Lost infancy of Man, 
For him no sculptured stone was reared 

By tutored sept or clan. 
Painter and sculptor, caid and sage 

Owe him neglected praise — 
Lord of the Neolithic Age 

And Captain of the Ways. 

Burnt is his spark ; gone down, long sped 

Into unheeded night; 
Dust are his hands, but still men tread 

The vintage of their might. 

71 



The House of the Winds 

Haply to-day some shipyard looms, 

Potent with force accrued, 
And loud Invention clangs and booms 

Where lay his dug-out rude. 

Haply the strong cranes lift and bear 

Masses of structure shaped 
Hard by the salted margins, where 

He hewed, and chipped, and scraped ; 
Boiler and bulkhead, beam and mast, 

Crank and propeller blade, 
Swing to their place appointed fast, 

All for the good of Trade. 

Surely his spirit somewhere hears. 

Out in the vastness wide. 
Echoes faint of the Newer Years, 

Borne o'er the roaring tide. 
Surely the white electric gleam 

Cleaving the darkness, yet 
Lights with its slow, revolving beam, 

This strange sea silhouette : 

Framed by a night cloud drooping low^ 

Dark and obscurely dim^ 
Paddling his frail boat hard and slow, 

Out at the dark sea rim — 



72 



The Pioneer 

Once in a hundred years perchance 

A watcher by the sea, 
One fleeting second's space may glance 

An Ancient Mystery. 

Bull-chested, bared to combat neiv, 

Soaked with the driving spray, 
Muscle and sinew, bone and thew 

Fighting their onward way ; 
Holding the sure coast close inboard. 

Hugging the solid shore — 
P asset h the great Seds Primal Lord 

Into the Nevermore. 

Father of Builders — as he fades 

Over the tither side, 
A Hner huge with whirling blades 

Cleaves outward in her pride ! 
Father of Sailors — as his ghost 

Mists at the rising moon, 
Comes the sound of ' Washington Post' 

Played in her grand saloon ! 



1Z 



' Let Go For'ard ! ' 

I AM 'elpless in me bunk, 
Oh, I'm dilly an' I'm drunk, 
An' I'm bruised an' black an' sore ; 
I've had a rotten time, 
An' the winch she sez, in rhyme, 
*' I — won't — get — drunk — any — more." 

But I listen for the word 
That before I've often 'eard : 
It is sweeter in me ear 
Than the chorus risin' clear 
Of a skylark on the wing : 
** Let GO for'ard ! 
Let go for'ard ! . . . 
Get a heave upon the spring ! " 

Now the row is done at last, 
An' they've got the lashin's fast ; 
I can feel the joyful thud 
Of 'er screw above the mud — 
Though me soul an' body's sore, 
I'm another kind o' man, 
I'm a real good doer — an' 
I — won't — get — drunk — any — more. 



74 



' Let Go For'ard ! ' 

I'll be 'eavln of the log, 
I'll be scoffin' of me prog, 
An' the battered thing that's me. 
Will be Johnny Jones, A.B. — 

In the mornin' I'll be fit, 
" Let go for'ard ! 
Let go for'ard ! 
Take a heave upon the spring, 
Get the gangway in a sling — 

We 'ave 'ad enough of it ! " 

When 'er screw begins to kick, 
Though we're silly an' we're sick. 
Why, the bangin' and the boom 
Of the blanky engine-room — 

*' Thud-er-ud-er-ud ! 

Cuss-yer-bones-an'-blood ! " 
It will make us good an' well. 
An' we'll give 'er bunkers 'ell 

In the mornin'. 

'Twill be pretty blue an' white. 
An' I'll get to sleep all right 
To the music of the shaft 
An' the racket fore an' aft ; 



75 



The House of the Winds 

For I've left me grief ashore — 
Let go for'ard, 
Let go for'ard, 
She was peachy pink, an' white. 
An' I wonder who to-night — 
'' Let go for'ard, 
Let GO for'ard, 
I — won't — do — that — any — more. " 

There's a cure for you an' me, 
An' it's called the Open Sea, . . . 
I 'ave fell from 'igh estate. 
But I'll stand up square and straight 
In the mornin', 
An' the ugly thing that's me 
Will be bully of the sea 
In the mornin'. 

They 'ave shaken ev'ry fist, 
An' the girls 'ave all been kissed, 
'' Let go for'ard. 
Let go for'ard ! 
An' 'eave a-way aft ! " 
The smoke pours from 'er funnel, 
There's a rumble in the tunnel, 
Of the damned old shaft. 



76 



' Let Go For'ard ! ' 

Now it's hi ! the open way, 
And it's hail the morrow day ! 
An' a hundred miles from shore, 
Let go for'ard, 
Let go for'ard — 
** I won't get drunk any more ! " 



n 



Boney 



I MET, one day, with Boney, 
By chance beside the Sea ; 
No gay-garbed youth and tony 
Might my acquaintance be ; 
For Truth's sweet sake, I own he 
Was e'en a Portugee, 

Who schnapper, bream, and taller 
Purveyed for loaves or beers. 

A fisher now ; a sailor 
He'd been in other years, 

When old Ben Boyd, the whaler. 
Had use for harpooneers. 

Outside the hostel, loudly 
The passing ships a-gleam 

With paint and brasswork proudly 
Went up or down the stream ; 

Each dockyard miss avow'dly 
A serving-maid of Steam. 

The Age of Iron round us 
In clash and clamour lay ; 



78 



Boney 

And strict convention bound us 
To methods of To-day ; 

Yet Fancy somehow found us 
And bore us far away. 

We each were scant of money 
That morn beside the sea ; 

With pert contempt Enone 
Served out our * thrippenny ' — 

One rum set up by Boney, 
And one set up by me. 

Hard hit by Fate, together 
We spake of other shores. 

And saw a white surf feather 
His far-off high Azores, 

Where, in wild Western weather. 
The loud Atlantic roars. 

And then — not greatly caring 
For either place or time — 

But back In mem'ry faring 
To other land and clime. 

All scorned convention daring, 
I hummed a deep-sea rhyme ! 



79 



8o 



The House of the Winds 

He met it at the chorus, 
That half-forgotten song ; 

The new world lay before us ; 
For either right or wrong 

We rolled — our glasses o'er us — 
The old world right along ! 



'* Then, oh, Fve got to leave you, 
Though all the winds may blow ; 

Dofit let 77zy parting grieve you, 
Shell-ho, my lass, shell-ho ; 

Tm sorry to deceive you. 
But I am bound to go'' 

With shame I'm called to own he 
Was ' low ' as I was * high ' — 

No virtuoso Boney, 
And no Caruso I — 

The scorn of fair Enone 
Was written in her eye. 

We roared that chantey over, 
With ne'er a windlass pawl — 



Boney 

The chantey of the lover, 

Who hears the deep seas call, 

The old carousing rover 
Beneath its topmasts tall. 



F 8i 



The Parting 



I CAN NOT bear the pain, dear lass ; 
I cannot let you go ! 
Around the capstan head they pass, 
Ye ho ! my lads, ye ho ! 

Oh ! every thought stabs like a knife, 

And ev'ry breath is pain ; 
You poured the sunlight in my life — 

The dark night calls again. 
Dear lass, 

I cannot let you go ; 
I will not let you go, dear lass ; 

I dare not let you go. 

The wind blows East, the wind blows West ; 

Cold blows the wind for me ; 
The pairing gulls upon the crest 

Are better off than we. 
I would that we lay breast to breast 

To-night beneath the sea. 

That lips of love should ever meet 
In kisses born of fire ! 
82 



The Parting 

Oh ! tramp my heart beneath your feet, 

And crush me to the mire ; 
But let me taste once more the sweet, 

Glad cup of my desire ! 

I cannot bear the pain, dear lass ; 

I will not let you go ! 
Around the capstan head they pass, 

Ye ho ! ye ho ! ye ho ! 



83 



The Stoke-hole 

Now the tropics lie a-dreaming 
'Mid their summer seas divine ; 
Phalanxed rollers, proudly creaming 
In a plumed cohort line, 
As the tourist ship goes steaming 
To the Islands, all a-shine. 

There's a grand piano playing 

Dainty operatic airs ; 
There's a travelled couple saying 

Sugared nothings on the stairs ; 
And the gilded purser's maying 

With the fairest of his fares. 

There are lots of fruits and ices, 

And abundance of champagne ; 
There are condiments and spices, 

There are whiskies squashed and plain 
For the Venuses and Vices 

Sailing pleasant o'er the main. 

There's a Devil down in Hades — 

How his sweating stokers scream 
84 



The Stoke-hole 

In a manner lords and ladies 
Could not even dimly dream ; 

There's a Devil down in Hades, 
And his Christian name is — Steam. 

By an iron ventilator 

In the upper deck of Hell, 
Some seraphic strayed spectator 

Might, from indications, tell 
That 'twas warm at the Equator, 

Where his damned inferiors dwell. 

So, the passenger, in suction. 
As his choice Havana draws, 

Could, by similar deduction. 

Learn from plain effect and cause 

That the Stoke-hole's hot construction 
Brings its own climatic laws. 

But, though sympathy's a treasure — 
As the preachers strive to show — 

Yet the traveller of leisure 

On these minions down below, 

Has a somewhat scanty measure 
Of that treasure to bestow. 



85 



The House of the Winds 

For his gay saloon, like Heaven, 

Is so far and far away ; 
Where the Hghts fall soft and even, 

And the saints and angels play ; 
Where the silken Virtues seven 

Sit enthroned all the day. 

But the seven vulgar Vices 
In their fiery regions dwell ; 

They are left to their devices, 
And they frizzle good and well ; 

For there's neither wine nor ices 
In the Stoke-hole, nor in Hell. 

When you're leaning o'er the railing 

Of your floating Paradise 
(Like a blessed Virtue, sailing 

By the virtue of a Vice), 
Just remember, you're prevailing 

Through the Devil's sad device. 

Oh, my lady, pray remember, 

'Mid your flutters and your sighs — 

That it ain't no cool September 
For the Stoker as he fries 



86 



The Stoke-hole 

In a climate where the ember 
Of old Tophet never dies. 

Yes, your lordship, please remember- 

From December to December — 
That the Stoke-hole always fries. 



87 



A Tale of Twenty Men 

A SAILOR from the salty South — and 
such as sailors be — 
A sailor from the briny North, they 
met upon the quay. 
*'Ho! messmate there, what cheer? What 

ho ! Here be two comrades met. 
From ramping wind and roaring sea, both God- 
delivered yet." 



*' But where's the news, and how's the news, 

and what's the last from hell ? 
With beer between and pipe between, what 

tales be there to tell ? 
From here and there ; from everywhere that 

ships and sailors go. 
What things of Love, and Drink, and Death, 

and fellowship dost know ? 

** How look the girls of Liverpool, the belles of 

New Orleans ? 
How tastes the taste of British junk or Boston 

pork-and-beans ? 
88 



A Tale of Twenty Men 

Is fever rife at Rio yet? What boats be out- 
ward bound ? 
Has any beggar got a berth ? Is any beggar 

drowned ? " 

• • • • • 

A lassie waits by Plymouth Pier ; another at 

Kinsale, 
And I must leave my missus here, God's glory ! 

when I sail ; 
But pork and beans is beans and pork, and 

junk is junk alway, 
And our old tub she turned keel up, last year 

off Table Bay ! 

She'd tumbled round the north and south, she'd 

wallowed east and west ; 
She'd been a clipper in her day and paced it 

with the best ; 
Her staunch oak ribs have stood the brunt of 

North Atlantic seas, 
When oft and oft the Devil sat aloft on her 

cross-trees. 

We fetched her out across the world and 
brouorht her home to berth ; 

89 



*25 



The House of the Winds 

We took her in, we took her out, to ev'ry port 

on earth ; 
We dragged her round the frozen Horn, we 

slung her through the Strait ; 
We slewed her at the Hobs of Hell and never 

scratched a plate. 

We drove her down to Beelzebub — our devils 

all in line — 
Then brought her up beside the Pit and hitched 

her with a twine, 
A tow-line's length from Kingdom Come, 

amidst the hiss and roar. 
We turned about, all sober men, and coaxed 

her off the shore. 



We've seen her flaunt her figure-head at zenith 

in her climb. 
Then drop her bowsprit in the trough and 

point it at the slime 
One hundred fathoms underneath, where 

should have been her keel. 
With two tied sailor-men, by God ! half-fainting 

at her wheel. 
90 



A Tale of Twenty Men 

She's wallowed through the inky night, with 

never star to guide, 
She's seen the sea-fires glow and burn and 

heard the surges glide ; 
She's seen the black and lonely waste ; she's 

seen the waste sun lit ; 
And dipped to greet the ruddy Day — and rose 

to welcome it. 

We've watched the day-god drop athwart the 

distant sea-line dim, 
And with the moonlight in our wake, due West 

we've followed him. 
We've heard and seen, and seen and heard ! 

Strange tales have we to tell, 
Who've looked five oceans in the face and 

learned to know them well. 

But as she lay by Plymouth town the rats went 

down her side. 
And when he saw, with what he knew, her 

skipper cursed and cried ; 
But when her owners heard his tale they laid 

insurance by 
And filled her up from hold to hatch and sent 

her out to die. 

91 



The House of the Winds 

With twenty men steeped to their lips in all 
the sins of men ; 

With twenty men cooped up like cats not 
knowing where nor when ; 

With twenty men to leave their bones, their 
loves, their hopes, and fears. 

Their rights and wrongs and all the rest, be- 
twixt two hemispheres ! 

They kissed their sins ashore good-bye, and 

drank their sins farewell. 
Then towed her down from Plymouth town and 

turned her out toward hell. 
And when she kicked her heels again upon the 

broad highway 
They lurched aloft to watch the world and give 

their sins * Good-day.' 

They dragged her down along the track, a 

God-forsaken crew, 
And ev'ry knot she made they laughed, but 

longed to count it two ! 
With sweeping seas from stem to stern, with 

rotten ropes and gear. 
With mouldy tack for sustenance and brine 

instead of beer ; 
92 



A Tale of Twenty Men 

With twenty sinners keeping watch ; at graft 

by night and day ; 
With ten to man the pumps and curse, with 

ten maybe to pray ; 
With two of twenty swept astern and sent to 

fight their death, 
To meet the Horror in the dark that choked 

them breath by breath ! 

• • • • • 

They fell about her slimy deck ; they clung to 

what they could ; 
Amid the crash of falling spars, the wrack of 

riven wood. 
They drowned like rats — that would not drown 

for one-and-six a day — 
They died to swell a bank-account that night 

off Table Bay. 

Aye, twenty things of bloated shape that 

sought a resting place. 
And three ship-owners shaking hands by 

God's own holy grace ; 
Aye, twenty things of clammy kind that, very 

shortly, stank. 
And three well-scented Englishmen with money 

in the bank. 

93 



The House of the Winds 

A sailor from the salty South — and such as 

sailors be — 
A seaman from the briny North come out 

across the sea, 
With beer between and pipe between they 

met, the tale to tell 
Of twenty men, all sailor-men, twice damned 

and sent to hell. 



94 



Meg o' Melbourne 

WE brought our old tub over 
With lumber, from the Sound — 
One sinner jammed and crippled, 
A silly bo'sun drowned ; 
The shipping papers published 

These items in their news 
As half-a-score of sinners 
Got out upon the booze. 

Going large in Flinders-street 

Full of Melbourne rum — 
All except the bo'sun 

Safe in Kingdom Come ; 
All except the bo'sun 

Resting deep and sound — 
Seaweed in his whiskers, 

And fishes swimmin' round. 



** Ve go and haf our Gristmass," 

Says Olafsen, the Dane. 
'* Ve get as trunk as plazes, 

Und never ship again ; 

95 



96 



The House of the Winds 

Ve preak der plasted record, 
Ve all-so preak our leave, 

Und gif der plasted skipper 
Some tings to make him grieve ! " 

The Sun beyond the Yarra 

Went reeling to his bed ; 
The lamp-posts danced cotillions — 

The drunkest one ahead ; 
And when the Day was ended, 

Above the cable cars 
And whirling trams, collided 

A multitude of stars. 

She said she lived at Carlton — 

Wherever that might be — 
She '' didn't take to sailors 

But somehow fancied me " : 
And some strange Dago wanted 

To stick me with his knife, 
All in the public parlour, 

To spill my precious life ! 

I've sometimes found a bottle 
A useful sort of thing 



Meg o' Melbourne 

To grab where rows are started, 
And other whiles to fling ; 

I swung a full M'Ewan, 

And when they cleared the deck 

Meg's arms were gently clinging — 
What-ho ! around my neck. 



There's nothing like a shindy, 

With just a smell o' blood. 
To rouse the latent instincts 

Of gentle Womanhood ; 
When Paris was a village 

Of fighting Eskimo, 
When London was a covert 

The Law was written so. 

And since the savage nations 

Grew civilized and tame. 
Below the paint and varnish 

The Law remains the same. 
The heir of Christian meekness 

When missiles start to hurl. 
He mostly gets the bottle — 

The Pagan gets the Girl ! 
G 97 



The House of the Winds 

So Meg and I were lovers 

Three summer months or more, 
A-bilHng and a-cooing 

Like dicky birds ashore ; 
Her hair was black and wavy, 

Her eyes were hazel-brown — 
A pearl of tribulation 

Was Meor o' Melbourne town. 



** You mustn't go a-roving, 

A-roving on the Sea, 
But chuck the game for ever 

And bide, dear heart, with me." 
'' I will not go a-roving, 

ril stay ashore with you, 
I've known some other women, 

But this is Love — and true ! " 



''We'll rent a little cottage 
With garden plot and stove, 

And all night long we'll sugar 
Our brimming cup of Love ! " 

She witched me with a whisper, 
She snared me with a touch — 



98 



Meg o' Melbourne 

Two wives across the water, 
They didn't matter much. 

I took a Httle shanty 

Way out in WilHamstown, 
And Meg and I were married, 

What-ho ! and settled down, 
And seven bob at lumping 

A day I sometimes made, 
Yes, seven bob at lumping — 

A most ungodly trade. 

The story has a sequel, 

Most stories of the kind, 
In spite of priest or parson, 

Are bound to have, you'll find ; 
For all the planet over. 

From Cuba to Japan, 
The ancient law was written 

Of Woman and of Man. 

She " didn't care for sailors " — 
Exceptions prove the rule — 

She played the fickle lady, 
I played the howling fool ; 

99 



The House of the Winds 

** Three months without the option " 
The landsmen know the law ; 

I never studied statutes, 

And — broke her landsman's jaw. 

I burst the happy dove-cage, 

A woeful deed to do. 
But other brutes have done it ; 

And so, mayhap, might you 
If, witched by hair of splendour 

And snared by eyes of brown, 
You saw good resolutions 

Go bung in Melbourne town. 

The Lover and his Lady, 

The Dove-cot and the Dream, 
A little drip of Heaven, 

A little sip of cream, 
The Jay-hawk and the Pigeon, 

Since e'er the World began 
' Two women ' spell Gehenna — 

Likewise, ' another man.' 

The story wears a sequel. 
And deep of hull she lies 

lOO 



Meg o^ Melbourne 

With maze of spars and cordage 
Uprearing to thej'skies ; 

And empty slop-chests for'ard 
And empty pockets here — 

Oh, sing the same old ditty, 
'* The Lover and his Dear ! " 



The brave new winch is clanging 

A rusty capstan song, 
And hi ! ye sons of . . . Someone, 

Get up and shift along ! 
Get up, ye sore-head sinners, 

And haul your shore-lines home, 
To-night we'll set the watches 

Across the Tasman foam. 



Oh, *' Whisky for my Johnny," 

And oh, the steady breeze, 
To bulge her snowy tops'ls 

And lilt her through the seas. 
The cook about the galley. 

Importantly he goes, 
And from his flesh-pots steaming 

A reeking fragrance flows. 

lOI 



The House of the Winds 

The sun beyond the Yarra 

Sinks steadily to bed ; 
The stars In tens of thousands 

Shine soberly o'erhead. 
And Meg, with hair of splendour, 

And eyes of hazel-brown, 
Will find her consolation 

To-night In Melbourne town. 



I02 



The Cutter Wongrahelle 

A Ballad of the Australian Coast 

SHE lay at anchor when they brought the 
news that Ned Malone 
Had broken, out on ' Spotted Dog,' his 
ribs and collar-bone ; 
That, on a cornsack stretcher now his mates 

were bearing slow 
Their shattered comrade from the claim, ten 
mountain miles or so. 

The summer's failing heart-blood stained each 

withered orchard leaf, 
And winter through the umber bush bewailed 

his ancient grief; 
A wolfish south wind, snarling hate, bit angrily 

the flanks 
Of hunted seas that sought the shores in long, 

close-crowded ranks. 

The bar had shallowed with the neap ; at each 
outgoing tide 

103 



The House of the Winds 

Swift liberated waters poured to meet the surge 
outside ; 

And where the tide and current met, a seethe 
of froth and sand 

In wild, witch cauldrons, hissing boiled, be- 
stirred by some drowned hand. 

John Newcombe owned the Wongrabelle ; and 

Newcombe's daughter May 
Looked seaward from the window-pane with 

strange set eyes that day — 
A rosy lass with laughing lips, brown-armed, 

and blithe, and strong, 
As any girl of twenty-year, that iron coast 

along. 

The foam below Cape Everard was not more 

light and free ; 
Nor might the black swan on the lake as wildly 

graceful be ; 
But to the lads who paid her court, and 

dreamed she might be won. 
She shone as distant as the hills of Nadji in 

the sun. 
104 



The Cutter TVongrabelle 

Yet he was tall and he was young, broad- 
shouldered, brave, and high, 

Full dowered with the manly gifts that glad a 
woman's eye ; 

And, but a week agone, he'd come with Love's 
old tale to tell — 

Lloyd Fletcher, out of Twofold Bay, who ran 
the Wongrabelle, 

The moon that evening like a globe of amber 
o'er the floor 

Of level waters slowly rose to light from shore 
to shore 

A mermaid's dance. Inverted, as by giant 
hands at play, 

The star-crowned shadows of the hills, deep- 
sunken, dreaming, lay. 

And all the inlet seemed to thrill — warm, still, 

and passionate — 
With soft glad echoes of the song that bids 

Life love and mate ; 
Thus had he told his tender tale, and she, in 

wilful way, 
Not knowing yet her heart mayhap, pronounced 

a school-girl " Nay." 

105 



The House of the Winds 

He turned his heel ; and down the track that 

found a grassy shore 
She watched a form whose shadow strode in 

seeming grief before ; 
And once she whispered, half aloud, *' Come 

back," and once again 
Her breath had seemed to stab her side in 

quick, half-pleasant pain. 

But woman's whim and woman's way are like 

the tracks of God, 
That lie beyond the outer stars, unknown and 

e'er untrod, 
What secret springs gush through her soul 

— all mud, or fresh and clear ; 
The minds of men at most surmise to either 

bless or fear. 

And now on beaches spray-obscured the hollow 

rollers tolled 
A Dead March in the scudded morn ; a falling 

glass foretold 
Worse weathers hatching in the south, but 

level seas or high, 
A wounded man must gain relief, or else the 

man must die. 
io6 



The Cutter TVongrabelk 

For fifty miles of bridle track, thro' forest and 

divide, 
With ranges piled in broken lines, no injured 

man might ride ; 
By fifty miles of stormy coast the port of Eden 

lay, 
As well they knew, who bare him down, that 

winter morning grey. 

John Newcombe shook his hoary head and 

cleared his husky throat — 
**God knows I'm willing, men, to risk, and 

double risk, the boat ; 
But human life's a diff'rent thing ; there's no 

man near or far 
Would dare to take a craft to-day to yonder 

cruel bar. 

The wind is blowing half a gale and fresh'ning 

from the south, 
And if she chanced to cross the reef she'd 

barely live it out ; 
I'd risk my ship but not the rest; God help 

your injured man. 
But he must bide and take his chance ; we'll 

nurse him best we can." 

107 



The House of the Winds 

Cold silence fell upon the crowd. Then, self- 
contained and slow, 

Lloyd Fletcher spoke, '' I'll face her out if any 
chap will go 

With me to tend this wounded man ; but, let 
him understand. 

Who puts his feet on yonder deck his life takes 
in his hand." 

Before the words had left his mouth, bull-roar- 
ing through his beard 

His prior claim and privilege, Tom Shannon 
volunteered. 

Nor did they cross his Celtic will, for well those 
miners knew 

That kinship's tie and mateship, too, long years 
had bound the two. 

** Now fifty sovereigns from the boys," cried 

swarthy * Four-ounce Jim,' 
*'Yon skipper lad shall have for this. Aye, 

either sink or swim " — 
Lloyd Fletcher stayed him at the word — " My 

lads, by God above, 
I take no payment from your hands, this trip I 

do for loveT 
1 08 



The Cutter Wongrabelle 

His eyes were on May Newcombe's face, and 

as the words outran 
She bent to hide her tell-tale cheeks above the 

stricken man, 
And deftly smoothed his pillow down, and bid 

his heart be brave ; 
But other sign of what she felt, if feel she 

might, ne'er gave. 

They grouped upon the shore to watch, with 

anxious eyes, afar 
The Wongrabelle, of twenty tons, face bravely 

to the bar. 
" God keep her engine going good, her quick 

ignition sure ; 
God aid the dynamo," they prayed, ** and hold 

the shaft secure." 

Great combers thundered down the beach, and 

at the entrance threw 
Their curling weight of waters green, as further 

out she drew. 
She passed the channel points at last, and then, 

with sickened soul, 
May saw her meet with pouring decks the high 

incoming roll. 

109 



The House of the Winds 

" She's on the bar," John Newcombe cried, 

and wrung his wrinkled hands. 
'* She's gone!" they sobbed. ''She's not! She 

lifts ! Oh, God, he's struck the sands ! " 
May Newcombe's fingers bruised her palms ; 

the sky grew darkened then ; 
And women sobbed and curses rose from 

mouths of anguished men. 

They saw her rally in the spume. She 

staggered, shook, uprose, 
Like some game bantam pugilist from quick 

and heavy blows. 
One mighty roller rose ahead ; then, slowly 

lifting, curled, 
And breaking with a roar of doom its full 

weight on her hurled. 

The women turned their heads away. The 

seconds lagged like years ; 
Then, like a wounded duck, that dives and 

lamely reappears. 
Dismasted, swept, but floating still and on a 

moving keel. 
The Wongrabelle came gamely up, with 

Fletcher at her wheel, 
no 



The Cutter TVongrabelle 

She dived a hollow trough adown, and, on a 

rising wave, 
Went out across that awful bar, the little cutter 

brave ; 
And had the echoes not been lost amid the 

hiss and roar 
The gallant Fletcher might have heard them 

cheering from the shore. 

May Newcombe tore with joyous laugh, and 

flung its fragments high 
Toward Eden Town, the pencilled scrawl that 

bore his curt ' Good-bye.' 
Then on she passed, and down she passed, and 

through the paddock gate 
Went out and called like bells a-ring her black 

mare, Bonny Kate. 

The saddle to her silken side was e'er so 

quickly flung ; 
The bridle on her glossy neck by deft hands 

gently hung ; 
Then straight she rode and fast she rode the 

hills and gullies o'er, 
Her house frock flying in the wind, and ne'er 

a hood she wore. 

Ill 



The House of the Winds 

She found her journey's end ere noon — then 

wrote a note and turned 
Her homeward way with eyes alight and 

cheeks that redly burned, 
For down the line to Twofold Bay the Morse 

was cllcklnof free — 
" God bless the Wongrabelle, and you — come 

back and marry me." 

He wed her at the Chrlstmastide, and Ned 

Malone was gay 
Enough to stumble through a dance, the good 

bush gossips say ; 
But down the coast and round the coast the 

mates and captains tell 
How Fletcher brought across the bar his cutter 

Wongrabelle. 



I 12 



A Capstan Chantey 

WHAT did the captain say to the cook 
When the ship went down the river ? 
I've left my girl in Melbourne town, 
Her hair was black and her eyes were brown ; 
And I'll love my girl for ever." 
Wey-ho ! We'll love the girls for ever ! 

What did the cook to the captain say 
When the ship went down the river ? 
** I've left my gal in Melbourne too, 
Her hair was gold and her eyes were blue ; 
And I'll love my gal for ever." 
Wey-ho ! We'll love the gals for ever ! 

What did the crew at the capstan sing 

As the old tank nosed the river ? 

** We've left our gals in Melbourne town. 
With eyes of blue and eyes of brown ; 
And we'll love our gals for ever." 

Hey ! We will forget them never ! 

What did the cook to the captain say 
As the ship*came down the river ? 

H 113 



The House of the Winds 

** I've left my gal in London town, 

Her hair is black and her eyes are brown, 

And I'll love my gal for ever." 

What did the captain say to the cook 
As the ship swung down the river ? 
'' I've left my girl in London too, 
Her hair is gold and her eyes are blue, 
And I'll love my girl for ever." 

What did the crew at the capstan sing ? 

Nothing at all but the same old thing 

As the ship came down the river ; 

'* We've left our loves in London town. 
And some were black and some were brown, 
But we'll love our loves for ever." 

L'Envoi 

So blow your money, my bullies all 
(The old tank's down the river). 
Blow your money and knock it down ; 

For some are short and some are tall. 
And some are black and some are brown. 
And the world goes round for ever. 



114 



The Fleets 

THE Black Finn lay in his bunk agasp — 
Sore fretted his soul for flight ; 
''I owed thee a favour once," said he, 
** Bend down till I give thee sight! "... 
He touched his eyes where the death-films 
spread, then clammily touched he mine — 
** Now, open the port-hole wide," he cried, 
''and repayment shall be thine! " 

The night was crowned with a lakh of stars ; 

but west, where the sun had died. 
His blood burned red at the sea-line yet, and 

suirowful mourned the tide. . . . 
This was the gift of the dying Finn : A-cover- 

ing all the Seas, 
I saw the ships of the Seas, in line, come over 

the centuries. 



I heard them bringing their anchors up in the 

harbours of Cockayne, 
I heard them laying their anchors down at the 

Blessed Isles again ; 

115 



The House of the Winds 

The corposants at their mast-heads glowed. 

Betimes, as they passed me by, 
I saw the stars through their sails afar, shine 

dim in the lower sky ! 

The Ancient Sire in his fire-scooped bole, 

rowed first through the falling dusk — 
His flint axe-head by a tough thong tied, his 

spear of the mammoth tusk : 
And o'er the boom of the brooding waves, I 

heard as he paddled on 
The hungry growl of the Great Cave Bear, the 

tramp of the Mastodon. 

The echoes died in a voice of crowds as out 
from the Tigris' mouth 

The bulrush boat of a Bagdad sheik came roll- 
ing her cargo South ; 

Her strong palm wine in its earthen jars, her 
dates on their green leaves laid. 

To passion the lord of Babylon, and pleasure 
the Hittite maid. . . . 

Soft fell the clink of a brazen bell, and under 

our counter passed 
ii6 



The Fleets 

A quaint-built craft of acanthus wood, on her 

twin acanthus mast 
A papyrus sail, all lotus-flowered ; reclined in 

its shade a girl 
With deep, orbed eyes of the despot East, and 

a mouth of rose and pearl. . . . 

I heard the roll of the Prakritt speech, and a 

galley tall rode on. 
All clinker-built of a cedar trunk from the 

Mount of Lebanon : 
Her deep keel leaped to the mighty sweep of 

the thrashing three-banked oars, 
As she held away from the pirate hands that 

itched by the Tuscan shores. 

** But this," I cried, ** from the dockyards wide 

of the blue Piraeus swung ; 
These be the men who have wrought with 

stone and written in Homer's tongue." 
I hailed them loud as their brave ship passed, 

and the echoes answered me : 
" Oh sang the seas when the world was young ; 

sweet was the song of the sea ; 

117 



The House of the Winds 

The days are dead and the days will die, but 
liveth the Odyssey." 



The Black Finn muttered a Nor'land spell and 

groaned like a dog in pain — 
*' I owed thee a favour twice," said he, ''look 

out on the seas again ! " 
I looked, and lo ! from the Ten Lost Isles to 

the Island of San Chen-San, 
From Hy-Brasil to the Port of Lob, the host 

of their numbers ran : 

Tied in the link of a thousand years, the Celt, 

in his skin canoe, 
Rode prow and prow with a Kentish chief hard 

pulled by a painted crew ; 
And, linked again by a thousand years, a proa 

with her sail aback 
Rode neck and neck with the Hunting Man in 

his walrus-hide kayak. 

The long, beaked neck of a Punic barge shot 

by like a scared sea-snake, 
ii8 



The Fleets 

Her lights ablaze on the brazen helms of the 

Latin foe a-wake, 
Abiding not to his haughty hail they galloped 

along the foam, — 
*' The gods that ye know avail ye not ! Give 

heed to the gods of Rome 1 " 



Aye, now the Cub of the Wolf at Rome a- 

cleaving the seas doth go, 
To clear the road to the Westward Isles that 

her traders' keels may know 
The weight of the British hides and wool and 

the Western fish and game, 
That garnish the proud patrician board of the 

Proud Patrician Dame. 



The Black Finn moaned on his bed of Death. 

'' Make haste ere I go," he cried ; 
** A favour thrice have I owed to thee ; now 

open the port-hole . . . wide !"...: 
From the silken South, the sinewed North, 

from the shining East and West, 
With their pale corpse-candles all alight and 

the four Winds all at rest. 

119 



The House of the Winds 

They drifted In from the Bay of Sleep and the 

Gulf of Acheron, 
They drifted out from the Isle of Souls ; from 

the Isles of Avalon ; 
They steamed from the frozen Dumslaf Land, 

away in the frozen seas ; 
From Fly-away-Cape, in Isle-au-Sein, and the 

famed Hesperides. 

The outer plain with their host was hid, and 

the inner plain was filled 
With ev'ry rig that the seas have known ; with 

every make and build. 
A mat-sailed junk of the China Coast and a 

white-washed Arab dhow 
They passed to port and to starboard on with 

the liner built of now. 

The narrow ships of the Creekmen bold spread 
their strong black raven wings, 

With blue-sailed boats of the Irish bays and 
fleets of the Saxon Kings. 

A bucentaur, with her long red oars and a high- 
decked hull of Spain, 

They rode with the tubs that traded wool for 
the wine of Aquitalne ; 

1 20 



The Fleets 

With Black Sea tubs of the Genoese, with the 

cruisers of Algiers, 
With slavers, pirates, and corsair-men in their 

fighting privateers ; 
With koffs which carried the Dutchman's goods 

langsyne to the Javanese, 
And Mogul's ships that were fain to yield to 

the plundering Portuguese. 

The fleets of the Nations gathered in, the fleets 

of the Nations grew, 
But the Fleet of the Little Islands spread till 

they counted six to two. 
Along the Downs and abreast the Sands, like 

a great cloud came they forth. 
And some went West to the Seas Unknown, 

and some to the South and North. 

Then heard I a Voice from over-seas, and the 

Voice in thunders spake : 
*' The spoil of the world is his for aye who 

courage shall find to take ; 
The codfish spawns on the Banks for him ; 

the bees of the Alp slopes toil, 
The fruits of the fruiting Earth are his ; the 

corn, the wine, and the oil ! " 

121 



The House of the Wmds 

A silence fell on the Nations all. Then a 

strong-tongued voice up-spoke : 
*' With grammars and guns we go, oh Lord ! 

with the Heart of Steel and Oak ; 
The plunder of Antwerp first we take, but, 

Lord, ere our flags be furled, 
We'll spoil the spoilers of all the earth and 

loot the loot of the world. 



Our English blondes in the rajah's silks shall 

shine as they walk arrayed, 
Our workmen's hands they are deft to build, 

and our hearts be unafraid ; 
We've lack o' sable for Whitehall folk, and 

port for our noble dames. 
And the weed that grows where Raleigh went 

— in spite of our good King James ! 

The Doge of Venice may bite his beard, and 

counsel his lords profound, 
The Turk hath greeted our Tudor Queen, and 

the Susans outward bound ; 
She's ta'en a cargo of London truck, and her 

skipper trusts in God, 

122 -^ 



The Fleets 

The length o' stroke and the strength of oak 
and his great guns thirty-odd. . . ." 

• • • ~ • • 

I saw them spreading and spreading far, yea, 

over the utmost seas : 
The black-hulled catts of the Steelyard firms, 

and the Livery Companies ; 
The sailing-ships of the First Great Queen, the 

steaming ships of the Last, 
By the rogues of the realm all stoutly manned, 

and the red flag at the mast. 

The last to cross was a battleship of a clean 

ten thousand tons, 
A two-foot wall of twice-tempered steel and a 

grinning tier of guns ; 
Her triple-expansion engines throbbed at touch 

of her engineers. 
She lit the seas with her bright arc-light and 

blotted away the years. 

She hulled them down on St Brandon's Road, 
and I watched them one by one. 

Till the last great liner thundered out, and the 
last drab tramp was gone. 

123 



The House of the Winds 

The stars lay still on the lonely seas, I turned 

to the Finn, and said : 
** Whither in truth have the good ships gone ? " 

— but the lean Black Finn was dead. 



124 



Johnny's Church 

THEY'VE broken up the meeting, 
They've called the Consuls home, 
The shoreward drums are beating 
Like pulses in the gloom. 
The torn, red flag of story 
Is flapping high for glory, 
Or waving low for doom. 

Now, who's to give the text out, 

And lead the choir to-day ? 
Now who's to read the text out, 

And tell the band to play ? 
They've done the talk and writing. 
But who's to do the fighting. 

And make the fighting pay? 

Oh, don't you hear him cheering ? 

Oh, can't you hear him swear .f^ 
In line o' battle nearing 

The scowling squadrons there ! 
The heavy guns he's sighting, 
For of the Lion's fighting 

He takes the lion's share. 



125 



The House of the Winds 

Now once they asked a teacher — 
And strange the sermon runs — 

For Johnny was the preacher, 
The Deacon of the Guns ; 

The world had need of teaching, 

And Johnny did the preaching ; 
His pulpit housed the guns. 

His church Is paved with powder, 
And roofed with grape and shell, 

And from its belfry louder 
The peals of battle knell. 

With pointed steel-shot singing. 

And red-mouthed rifles ringing, 
In volleys, for the bell. 

His text, in bright lines written. 
Gleams o'er the chancel grey — 

Two glowing words, war-litten, 
Two words — * Trafalgar Bay ' — 

Two words that die not ever. 

Two words that burn for ever, 
Two words — ' Trafalgar Bay ! ' 

So when our pocket money 
Around we freely fling, 
126 



Johnny's Church 

We'll stand a drink for Johnny, 
Churchwarden to the King ; 
For Jack's a handy teacher, 
A most converting preacher, 
When loud the broadsides ring. 

'Tis his that text to glisten 

The smoke of conflict through ; 
And all the world will listen, 

And hold his sermon true ; 
If Johnny goes a-teaching 

His lesson once again. 
If Johnny goes a-preaching 

With glory in his train. 



127 



A Ballad of the Captains 



w 



HERE are now the Captains 
Of the narrow ships of old— 



Who with valiant souls went seeking 

For the Fabled Fleece of Gold ; 
In the clouded Dusk of Ages, 

In the Dawn of History, 
When the ringing songs of Homer 

First re-echoed o'er the Sea ? 

Oh, the Captains lie a-sleeping 
Where great iron hulls are sweeping 

Out of Suez in their pride ; 
And they hear not, and they heed not. 
And they know not, and they need not 

In their deep graves far and wide. 

Where are now the Captains 

Who went blindly through the Strait, 
With a tribute to Poseidon 

A libation poured to Fate ? 
They were heroes giant-hearted. 

That with Terrors, told and sung, 
Like blindfolded lions grappled. 

When the World was strange and young. 
128 



A Ballad of the Captains 

Oh, the Captains brave and daring, 
, With their grim old crews are faring 

Where our guiding beacons gleam ; 
And the homeward liners o'er them — 
All the charted seas before them — 

Shall not wake them as they dream. 

Where are now the Captains 

From bold Nelson back to Drake, 
Who came drumming up the Channel, 

Haling prizes in their wake ? 
Where are England's fighting Captains 

Who, with battle flags unfurled, 
Went a-rleving all the rievers 

O'er the waves of all the world ? 

Oh, these Captains, all confiding 
In the strong right hand, are biding 

In the margins, on the Main ;] 
They are shining bright in story, 
They are sleeping deep in glory. 

On the silken lap of Fame. 

Where are now the Captains 
Who regarded not the tears 
I 129 



The House of the Winds 

Of the captured Christian maidens 
Carried, weeping, to Algiers ? 

Yes, the swarthy Moorish Captains, 
Storming wildly 'cross the Bay, 

With a dead hidalgo's daughter 
As a dower for the Dey ? 

Oh, those cruel Captains never 
Shall sweet lovers more dissever, 

On their forays as they roll ; 
Or the mad Dons curse them vainly. 
As their baffled ships, ungainly. 

Heel them, jeering, to the Mole. 

Where are now the Captains 

Of those racing, roaring days. 
Who of knowledge and of courage. 

Drove the clippers on their ways — 
To the furthest ounce of pressure. 

To the latest stitch of sail, 
* Carried on ' before the tempest 

Till the waters lapped the rail ? 

Oh, the merry, manly skippers 
Of the traders and the clippers. 
They are sleeping East and West, 
130 



A Ballad of the Captains 

And the brave blue seas shall hold them, 
And the oceans five enfold them 
In the havens where they rest. 

Where are now the Captains 

Of the gallant days agone ? 
They are biding in their places, 

And the Great Deep bears no traces 
Of their good ships passed and gone. 

They are biding in their places. 
Where the light of God's own grace is, 

And the Great Deep thunders on. 

Yea, with never port to steer for, 
And with never storm to fear for, 

They are waiting wan and white. 
And they hear no more the calling 
Of the watches, or the falling 

Of the sea rain in the night. 



131 



Thine Ain Countree 

SHE was squalid and unlovely, and her 
tattered jib and brown, 
Like a greasy, vulgar dish-clout in the 
evening light flapped down — 
But our hearts went out to meet her, 
And our glad souls rose to greet her, 
And we cheered that little trader from the 
wharves of Sydney town. 

It Is ever what you're bred to 

In your own old line ; 
It Is ever what you're led to 

Sin' the days of Auld Lang Syne. 

We had climbed the purple ranges ; crossed 

the level plains and wide ; 
We had ridden with the stockmen on the 
burning Western side ; 
But we hungered for the daughters 
Of the Overlords of Waters — 
For the thunder of the breakers, and the 

tumble of the tide. 
132 



Thine Ain Countree 

Let the lion to his desert ; 

Live the oyster on his shore : 
But the hunger of the exile 

It shall hurt him evermore. 

She was innocent of outline ; she was ugly and 

unclean ; 
She was not a painted liner or the pride of 
Aberdeen ; 
But it gripped us as we neared her, 
And we gat us up and cheered her, 
For the sake of what we cared for, and the 
sake of What-Has-Been. 

Oh, the kitchen-maid's a lady when the lady's 

at the ball, 
And the palm-tree in the desert is the fairest 
of them all — 
Shall the heart forget its true love 
For the glamour of the new love ? 
Shall the grapes from thorns be garnered, or 
the figs from thistles fall ? 

And she told us of the waters, and she spake 
of open seas, 

^33 



The House of the Winds 

When she grumbled down the river with her 
engines all a-wheeze ; 
Then our hearts went to those places, 
And the tears were on our faces, 
For a man is but an infant when it comes to 
things like these. 

It is ever what you're bred to. 

And you find it as you go 
That you're tempted back and led to 

Little things — of * long ago.' 

So we followed her in fancy till she swung 

across the bar, 
And we saw her lights a-blinking on the heave 
and roll afar. 
By the magic fay whose touches 
Turn the scullion to a duchess, 
Make the kitchen-maid a lady and the tallow- 
dip a star. 

They shall pine beyond the rivers for the 

rollers and the foam. 
They shall pine beyond the rollers for the 

rivers as they roam : 

134 



Thine Ain Countree 

She was ugly, and we loved her, 
She was nothing, but we loved her, 
For she told us of our Country and she sang to 
us of Home. 



135 



The Nor'-Easter 

TIS ever good and gentle, 
'Tis always cool and kind 
When Hell lies on the tropics, 
And men go mad and blind, 
The silken, soft Nor'-Easter, 

The languid lady breeze 
That God sends down from China, — 
A dove across the seas. 



A-swinging in my hammock, 

Beneath a singing pine, 
I hear the glad white horses 

Race homeward all a-line ; 
The sea spray drifting forward. 

Across a dreamy reach 
Of yellow sands that circle 

The misty moonlit beach. 

And yonder, on the sea wall, 
The good fat oysters cling ; 

And yonder up the river 

The glutted black ducks wing : 



I ^6 



The Nor'-Easter 

And when the tide comes surelnor 
Across and round the shoals, 

They'll hook the hungry black bream 
And spear the drifting soles. 

Oh, let me clasp, Juanita, 

Your loveliness again, 
You wond'rous flower of Ireland, 

You wond'rous fruit of Spain ! 
While all the stars, in splendid. 

Still majesty on high, 
Slow wheel and circle Westward 

Across a Queensland sky. 

'Twas but last night I kissed you 

Along yon harbour wall ; 
And you, dear heart, resisted, 

Resisted not at all. 
And lo ! those gates of Heaven, 

I don't expect to see, 
With sudden crash of music. 

Burst open unto me. 

Wild gipsy of the Beaches, 
Wild daughter of the Sun, 



^Z1 



The House of the Winds 

What rover's hearts before me 
Have you not coaxed and won ? 

For ships, ere mine, cast anchor 
Below yon shallow quay, 

And shipmen, too, have dallied, 
My dark-eyed dream, with thee. 

For Spain and Ireland's flotsam. 

If Rumour whispers true, 
Were sinful sire and mother, 

Carissima, to you ; 
And in your veins makes riot 

The red, transmitted fire 
That wastes the souls of wooers 

On altars of Desire. 



But out to-night, beloved. 

With warnings dull and sour ! 
Whatever is is right, Love : 

I'll live my fervent hour ; 
And you shall be Sultana 

And Queen of All the Girls, 
And I shall rule, a Sultan, 

This coast of Palm and Pearls. 



«38 



The Nor -Easter 

Dark daughter of the Beaches, 

Whose eyes are arched by night, 
Whose red mouth madly beckoned 

A lover to delight ; 
My throbbing Soul of Passion, 

Though this a ' love of shame ' 
Be held by pious purists — 

The climate's most to blame. 

For, let the pious purist 

Just even so recline, 
A heart beside him throbbing 

Beneath a scented pine. 
And let him drink the glamour 

The glory of it all — 
God help your gentle purist, 

God guard him — lest he fall ! 

Across the moonlit waters 

A scent of tuberose 
And mangrove and magnolia 

The cool Nor'-Easter blows ; 
Oh, all the way from China, 

From merry Kobe town. 
Past Java and the Indies 

This poppied wind comes down. 

139 



The House of the Winds 

They bless It at Port Darwin, 

And round the Gulf they hail 
The precious wind that bellies 

The pearling lugger's sail. 
Now, south from Thursday Island, 

Among the coral isles, 
'Tis singing, like an anthem, 

For twice a thousand miles, 

While lovers down the Clarence, 

And lovers on the Tweed, 
Drink in its virgin coolness 

And on its freshness feed, — 
The laughing, lush Nor'-Easter 

The languid, lady breeze. 
The Lord sends down from China 

To glad His glowing seas. 

Juanita! Oh, Juanita ! 

The sky Is white with stars 
The surf is making music 

Across the river bars. 
Juanita! Oh, Juanita! 

Your arms and bosom white 
Would lure the proud archangels 

To earth again to-night. 



140 



The Nor'-Easter 

To-morrow, love, to-morrow 

You'll hear the capstan bring 
Our anchor from the coral. 

And hear the chantey ring ; 
Then, feeling for the channel, 

Her tops'ls swinging low, 
And bowsprit pointing seaward, 

My ship, alas ! must go. 

But when the light Nor'-Easter 

Your face will cool and kiss, 
In other nights of glory. 

In other nights of bliss ; 
When on a cloth of velvet 

The silver stars are sown, 
I'll dream of you, Juanita, 

Of you — of you alone. 

From Townsville unto Timor, 

From Sidney round to Perth, 
And round again to London, 

And round and round the earth, 
Beneath the Cross star-crowded, 

Beneath the great North Bear, 
Wherever ship shall bear me — 

Your mem'ry will be there. 

141 



The House of the Winds 

The wharves of Honolulu, 

The quays of Callao, 
Wherever cargoes carry, 

Wherever sailors go ; 
And on the lone, wide waters, 

Beneath the lone, wide sky, 
'Twill grieve me and 'twill glad me, 

Beloved, 'till I die. 

'Tis always good and gentle, 

'Tis ever fond and kind — 
The little soft Nor'-Easter, 

The little lover's wind ; 
The silken soft Nor'-Easter, 

The languid lady breeze, 
That God sends down from China 

To cool His summer seas. 



142 



A Thousand Years Between 

HE snow on the sleeping fir trees 



nr 



Grew red In a band of light, 



As the huo^e log-s flared and beaconed 
Far off through a Northern night ; 

Where, sprawled on their rude oak benches, 
The wine-drunk Northmen tall. 

Loud chorused a battle saga, 
In their Viking's fire-lit hall. 

The smoke-grimed roof-tree trembled 
As higher the war words rang ; 

In clamouring measure rising, 
Attuned to an armoured clang. 

Cold stars, in a steel-white glory. 

Paled out in a boreal morn, 
And the Night-wind carried the story 

Of a warrior's son, new born. 

On the shield of a bardic chieftain 

Was the wolf-cub lifted high ; 
And his bull-lunged kinsfolk hailed him 

As the night went roaring by. 



143 



The House of the Winds 

He played with the skulls and spearheads 
When his sire, with a baresark band 

Went over the seas to harry 
The carlins of Engle-land. 

He chafed In his high rock eyrie, 
And ever his soul grew strong. 

Full fed with the deeds of heroes 
And story and battle song. 

At length, as the seers foretold him 
Man-grown, on the shingled shore, 

He stood, with his youth behind him, 
And the heroes' road before. 

*' I will hew my way to a kingdom," 
The voice in his young heart said ; 

*• 1 will set my feet to a kingdom, 

Though the path of my feet runs red." 

The beak of his black ship pointed 
To the North Seas grey and deep, 

As out from the wild bleak fiord 
She went with her oars a-sweep. 
144 



A Thousand Years Between 

And a maiden waited lonely 

On the hills of Norroway, 
And a maiden waited lonely 

Through many a long dead day. 

He fared with his fourscore fighters ; 

And oft did the Erse bards sing 
The deeds of a Daneland rover, 

The death of a red Erse king. 

The harps of the bards were wailing 

Their woe in an Irish vale, 
As, out on the dim Atlantic, 

There faded a foeman's sail. 

In the halls of their grim Valhalla 

The souls of his rovers sate ; 
But the Viking's son went sailing 

Alone through the Western gate. 

O'er scream of the wild, weird waters ; 

Doomstruck, on a night-black sea, 
Shouting his lone death saga 

Unfeared, to his end went he. 

K 145 



146 



The House of the Winds 

The tiller of Earth to cover him 
Hath ever his meed of mould ; 

But over the deep-sea rover 

The waves of the world are rolled. 



There was neither a shout of wassail, 
Nor clamour of shield and sword, 

In the house of Olaf Peters 

By the high-walled Norse fiord. 

But a wrinkled midwife mumbled : 
*' Henceforth when thy port is won 

Thou wilt kiss, O Olaf Peters, 
The head of thv firstborn son." 

He played on the Norland shingle, 
Where a Viking's ship once lay, 

This child of a nomad toiler, 
This heir of a newer day. 

He followed her painted funnel, 
As the whaling steamer sped, 

Where the light of far Fruholmen 
On the breaking seas burns red. 



A Thousand Years Between 

And the English tourists, safely, 
Came over the seas in packs, 

With never a fear of blunting 
The edge of a Northman's axe. 

But the Voice of the Waters wooed him, 

As ever her Voices may ; 
And a maiden waited lonely 

On the hills of Norroway. 

Yea, a maiden, watching lonely — 
As many a maid hath done — 

Still hopes for the glad home-faring 
Of Olaf Peterson. 

But a Baltic tramp, come over 
For her cargo of Yankee pork, 

Brought tidings of little moment 
To the scribes of far New York. 

'Twas merely a log-book entry, 
Scrawled large by a busy mate, 

Of a gale in the North Atlantic 
And a foreign sailor's fate. . . . 



147 



148 



The House of the Winds 

Hurled to the howling surges, 
Swept from a wave-washed yard, 

Olaf, the young Norse seaman, 
Dieth his line death hard. 



Down in that black, mad vortex. 

Up on the curling crests ; 
Down, as his strong limbs stiffen, 

Down, where the Viking rests. . . . 

So to the place appointed — 
One from the Days of Sword, 

One from the Years of Wages, 
Out of the same fiord. 

Proud lord of the grand old by-road, 
Poor slave of the new and mean, 

They rest on the great west high road, 
With a thousand years between. 

They bide, at the last, together — 
One from the years sublime, 

One from the new years sordid. 
Equals in death — and time. 



A Thousand Years Between 

The tiller of earth to cover him 
Hath ever his meed of mould, 

But over the deep-sea rover 

The waves of the world are rolled. 



149 



Hulks 

DIM lights shine down on the Harbour, 
bright lights along the Quay ; 
The watch-light slowly turneth across 
the Tasman Sea — 
The watch-light on its headland, that, like some 

proud and great 
Armed sentinel high standeth to ward the 
Eastern Gate. 



Glad lights burn down the fairway, and song 

and shout of life 
From high-hulled fleets of commerce with city 

sounds make strife ; 
But, moored among the shadows, while all the 

world goes by. 
Like cripples in some poorhouse, the old hulks 

dreaming lie. 

Poor pensioned paupers waiting, with tired and 

aching bones. 
The falling of the curtain, to rest with Davy 

Jones. 

150 



Hulks 

Green slime upon their sheathing, dry caulking 

in their seams — 
Some common daily purpose, and nightly 

naught but dreams. 

But if the proud, strong steamers who lightly 

come and go — 
Oh, if the proud, smart steamers could only 

hear and know ! 
Or if those flounced, fast ladies, with patent 

rig and gear, 
If they had ears to listen, what stories might 

they hear ! 

Yes, they might hear the wonders these brave 

old hulks could tell, 
If ships had tongues for speaking, if ships had 

souls as well ; 
For ships and men have battled around the 

seven seas, 
And in their hearts oft carrv, who knows what 

memories ? 

They tell of long-dead captains, and long-gone 
sailors bold, / 

151 



The House of the Winds 

Who fared the Treasure-Seekers to Lands of 

Grief and Gold, 
Who brought our EngHsh fathers across the 

fearsome seas, 
Who bore our Irish mothers to States and 

Colonies. 



They'd sing the Black-ball clippers, old Money 

Wigram's fleet. 
Stout barks and sterling skippers who put 

unshrinking feet 
In doorways deep of danger, and at the gates 

of Hell 
Defied the devil's legions and fought their 

devil well. 

They'd sing no young sea dandies, with soft 

shore-going ways, 
But hard-faced, hard-reared sailors of old, dead 

sailing days. 
They knew no patent rigging. 'Twas ** Up 

aloft ye fly. 
And take yer flaming chances to live it out — 

or die ! " 

152 



Hulks 

Aye, crowd her swaying ratlines, and on 
t'gallant yard. 

Hang on by teeth and toe nails, and curse your 
chances hard. 

Her scuppers green sea spewing, a good three- 
quarter gale 

A-whooping from the sky-line — *' Aloft and 
take in sail ! " 

And crouching on her poop there, some fifty 

feet below, 
The man who bossed the oceans — till fifty 

years ago, 
With salt crust on his whiskers and coarse 

hair on his chest — 
The man who sneered at Progress, and bore it 

South and West. 

Caps off ye longshore sailors! and let your 

hands salute 
The man who sowed sour sorrow that ye might 

eat sweet fruit ! 
Caps off, ye feckless deck-hands ! The grateful 

engineer. 
Beside his gauge glass standing, to his paternal 

peer 

153 



The House of the Winds 

A greasy waste-wad raises ; for if by chance 

she strip 
The blades from her propeller, he learns of 

seamanship. 
And, ladies in your cabins, with conquered seas 

to hymn 
Your thoughts to pleasant fancies ; through 

curtained portholes dim. 

Look out on yonder surges that curling fall 

and break 
And die in soft subsidence behind your steamer s 

wake ; 
And in your minds behold him lashed on the 

bridge below. 
Before ye sink in slumber — Oh ! he'd be glad 

to know. 



Moored deep among the shadows an old hulk 

faintly hears, 
Beyond the Present calling, the Voices of the 

Years ; 
And as a squat North-Coaster comes thumping 

down the Bay, 

154 



Hulks 

One moment at her moorings she tugs in 
mournful way. 

She sees, to port and starboard, the red light 

and the green — 
The jewels ocean housemaid still wears with 

ocean queen. 
The chart-room door falls open ; and, red cigar 

to lip, 
Reflective, leans against it, the skipper of the 

ship. 

But forward, in the darkness, the peering look- 
out stands — 

A fair-haired Swede with knowledge of foreign 
seas and lands ; 

His father drowned before him, two brothers 
lost at sea — 

Ten centuries out yonder he might a Viking be ; 

Mayhap ancestral echoes, borne down along 

the tide. 
Now make him hold a second his rolling sailor 

stride ; 
And, as the old hulk visions within the gliding 

light, 

155 



The House of the Winds 

He waves his hand toward her and whispers 
low **Good night! " 



She hides among the shadows, dismasted, old, 

unclean, 
Her decks with coal-dust blackened, her copper 

slimed and green ; 
A pensioner of Progress, but in her roaring 

days, 
A white-dressed dainty lady who tripped the 

waterways. 

And as the new ships pass her — too proud to 

care or know, 
Bound in with wear of travel, bound out where 

live ships go — 
A strange ship-moan escapes her ; and weird 

and lone she sighs, 
To see once more unbounded the great, arched 

water skies. 

To feel once more beneath her the breathless 

heave and roll 
Of brave blue seas that girdle the earth from 

pole to pole, 

156 



Hulks 

To see the star host mirrored — so crowded and 

so deep, 
And watch the sea fires flicker and hear the 

dolphins leap. 

But, worn-out ships like men are, to whom the 

drift of years 
Leaves naught but recollection, the longings 

and the tears. 
Like dim, fast-fading visions of days that dawn 

no more — 
The Old Hulks in the shadows are hulks, and 

nothing more. 



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